Stravinsky: Keyboard Works
View all works by Stravinsky in the main appExplore the complete catalog of Keyboard compositions by Stravinsky. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.
| Title | Year | Actions |
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| Circus Polka |
Circus Polka: For a Young Elephant was written by Igor Stravinsky in 1942, and scored for wind band and Hammond organ by David Raksin. Stravinsky wrote it for a ballet production that the choreographer George Balanchine did for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The ballet was performed by fifty elephants and fifty ballerinas. Stravinsky's own orchestration was prepared later, and was premiered on 14 January 1944 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky conducting. |
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| Concerto for 2 solo pianos |
The Concerto for Two Pianos (sometimes also referred to as Concerto for Two Solo Pianos or rather as its Italian original name, Concerto per due pianoforti soli) is a composition by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was finished on November 9, 1935 and, together with his Sonata for Two Pianos, is considered nowadays as one of his major compositions for piano during his neoclassical period. It was also Stravinsky's first work after becoming a French citizen. |
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| Étude |
Quatre études, pour orchestre (English: Four Studies, for Orchestra) is a collection of arrangements of works by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. This composition was finished in 1928 and premiered in Berlin in 1930 by Ernest Ansermet. It was revised afterwards in 1952. |
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| Five Easy Pieces |
Five Easy Pieces, also referred to by its original French title Cinq pièces faciles, is a collection of pieces for four hands by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was finished in 1917 and was published as a set in the winter of 1917/18. |
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| Four Piano Etudes |
Quatre études, pour orchestre (English: Four Studies, for Orchestra) is a collection of arrangements of works by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. This composition was finished in 1928 and premiered in Berlin in 1930 by Ernest Ansermet. It was revised afterwards in 1952. |
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| Les cinq doigts |
Les cinq doigts is a 1921 piano composition by Igor Stravinsky. Subtitled 8 mélodies très faciles sur 5 notes (8 very easy melodies on 5 notes), the work comprises eight short pieces in which the right hand generally plays only five notes, remaining in essentially the same position at the keyboard throughout the work. The movements of the work have these tempo markings: Richard Taruskin has noted that the third section, the "Allegretto", is an arrangement of the Russian folk melody "Kamarinskaya". Stravinsky made a recording of Les cinq doigts for Brunswick Records as part of his first recording contract, signed in 1925. In 1962, the composer orchestrated the pieces, adding a few counter-melodies and imitations, yielding the chamber work, Eight Miniatures for Fifteen Players. The Moderato movement is featured in the movie Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. |
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| Piano Sonata |
The Piano Sonata, or Sonata for Piano, or in its original French form, Sonate pour piano, is a 1924 piano sonata by Russian expatriate composer Igor Stravinsky. |
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| Piano Sonata in F sharp minor |
F-sharp minor is a minor scale based on F♯, consisting of the pitches F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, D, and E. Its key signature has three sharps. Its relative major is A major and its parallel major is F-sharp major (or enharmonically G-flat major). The F-sharp natural minor scale is: Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with accidentals as necessary. The F-sharp harmonic minor and melodic minor scales are: |
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| Piano-Rag-Music |
Piano-Rag-Music is a composition for piano solo by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1919. Stravinsky, who had, by that time, emigrated to France after his studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, was confronted with American jazz combos actively influential in Europe. Stravinsky's knowledge of stylistic jazz properties was at first limited to scores brought to him from the United States by his colleague Ernest Ansermet. However, he had managed to hear live jazz bands by the time he finished Piano-Rag Music. Compositionally, Stravinsky interprets the ragtime in a rather cubist way, instead of directly imitating the style. Stravinsky incorporates elements from his Russian period (ostinati, shifting accents, bitonality) with rhythmic and harmonic fragments from ragtime. The irregular meters give the piece an improvisatory character. Stravinsky wrote the piece for Arthur Rubinstein, but it was instead premiered by José Iturbi, on November 8, 1919 in Lausanne. |
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| Scherzo |
Scherzo, sometimes also referred to as Scherzo in G minor, is one of Igor Stravinsky's earliest works for piano. It was composed in 1902. |
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| Serenade in A major |
Serenade in A is a work for solo piano by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Completed on September 9, 1925, in Vienna and published by Boosey & Hawkes, it resulted from his signing his first gramophone recording contract, for Brunswick, and was written so that each movement could fit on one side of a 78 rpm record. The dedicatee was Stravinsky's wife Yekaterina. |
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| Sonata for 2 Pianos |
The Concerto for Two Pianos (sometimes also referred to as Concerto for Two Solo Pianos or rather as its Italian original name, Concerto per due pianoforti soli) is a composition by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was finished on November 9, 1935 and, together with his Sonata for Two Pianos, is considered nowadays as one of his major compositions for piano during his neoclassical period. It was also Stravinsky's first work after becoming a French citizen. |
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| Tango |
Tango is a 1940 piece originally composed for piano by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It is one of Stravinsky's most recorded works for piano. |
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| Three Easy Pieces |
Five Easy Pieces, also referred to by its original French title Cinq pièces faciles, is a collection of pieces for four hands by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was finished in 1917 and was published as a set in the winter of 1917/18. |
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| Valse pour les enfants |
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor known for being one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century classical music. His unique approach to rhythm, instrumentation, and tonality made him a pivotal figure in modernist music. Stravinsky studied composition under composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov from 1902 to 1908, Stravinsky's Feu d'artifice being his last piece composed under Rimsky-Korsakov. During this time, Stravinsky completed his first full composition, the Symphony in E-flat major, catalogued Op. 1. Attending the premiere of Stravinsky's Scherzo fantastique and Feu d'artifice in 1909 was the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, owner of the Ballets Russes ballet company. Diaghilev was impressed enough that he commissioned Stravinsky to write some arrangements for the 1909 ballet season. In the following years, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write three ballets: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). These ballets remain Stravinsky's most famous works today. Stravinsky's music is typically divided into three style periods: the Russian period (c. 1907–1919), the neoclassical period (c. 1920–1954), and the serial period (1954–1968). Stravinsky's Russian period is characterized by the use of Russian folk tunes and the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, and Taneyev. His neoclassical period reflected back to the techniques and themes of the Classical period, like his use of the sonata form in the first movement of his Octet (1923) and the Greek mythological themes in Apollo (1928), Perséphone (1933), and Orpheus (1947). His serial period began with using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique dodecaphony in Agon (1954–57), later experimenting with non-twelve-tone techniques in his Cantata (1952) and Septet (1953). |